DEMONSTRATION CALLS FOR ETHICS PROBE OF REP. POMBO

Contact:

Darryl Cherney, Environmentally Sound Promotions: 707/923-4949;
Mandeep Gill, Redwood Action Team at Stanford 650/327-0742

Activists are holding a press conference and small demonstration at 12 noon at the office of Congressman Richard Pombo:

********************** Location: **********************
STOCKTON OFFICE
2495 West March Lane, Suite 104
Stockton, CA 95207
Ph: (209) 951-3091 / Fax: (209) 951-1910
*******************************************************

The event will call attention to Pombo\'s complicity in interfering with the very last of the Savings and Loan trials left over from the debacles of the 1980\'s. MAXXAM, Inc. and Charles Hurwitz, who controlled United Savings Association of Texas (along with Michael Milken of Drexel Brokerage), used the S&L\'s funds to finance the takeover of Pacific Lumber Company and Kaiser Aluminum. Attorneys at the FDIC and Office of Thrift Supervision initiated court proceedings in 1995 to collect over $1 billion they jointly claim should be returned to the taxpayers.

Rep. Pombo and others, after receiving contributions from MAXXAM/Pacific Lumber Company, initiated a Congressional Task force to probe into whether the banking agencies filed their claims at the behest of environmentalists who wanted a \"debt-for-nature\" swap in order to trade any liability United Savings may have for Pacific Lumber\'s ancient redwoods and Douglas fir. Activists claim Pombo\'s task force is just a ruse to cover for MAXXAM, a mega-donor to the Republican Party. MAXXAM contributed $100,000 to the Bush Inaugural, tens of thousands to the Republican National Committee, and made campaign contributions to members of the House Banking Committee and Majority Whip Tom Delay. Many of those Congressmen including Rep. Delay, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), and others wrote scathing letters to the FDIC and OTS. Those letter were followed by what activists call a \"dog and pony\" show in December of last year in the form of a Resources Committee task force. Activists believe the Resource Committee, under its former Chair Don Young and members like Pombo and Rep. Radanovich, was chosen because it was more corrupt and ideoligically right-wing than the House Banking committee.

In an even more extreme ethical breach, Pombo then released the task force\'s findings after the task force that created it and the Resources Committee itself had dissolved to make way for the new Congress. Rep. Pombo did this by sneaking the \"report\" into the Congressional Record, rather than calling for a Committee vote, as it the normal procedure. Pombo and MAXXAM, Inc. then attempted to deliberately mislead the media into thinking this was an official Congressional report. \"In fact,\" said Darryl Cherney of Environmentally Sound Promotions and the initiator of the debt-for-nature swap campaign, \"releasing the report was the unilateral act of a rogue Congressman Pombo, doing the bidding of MAXXAM, a Republican corporate mega-donor.\"

The Redwood Action Team of Stanford University, Earth First!, the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, and Environmentally Sound Promotions are all calling for the Senate Banking Committee, under its new Democratic leadership to investigate Pombo\'s and MAXXAM\'s activities in the interference with ongoing banking litigation. Those organizations are also asking members of the House Ethics Committee to consider probing whether Pombo violated House rules by releasing the report. \"With the $821M OTS case completed and waiting on a Judge\'s ruling, MAXXAM is engaging in a campaign of intimidation to squirm out of their debt to the taxpayers. They should pay that debt in their forestland holdings, if they choose, or cold hard cash, if they prefer,\" said Cherney. \"It\'s pathetic watching the last corrupt flailings of a dying corporate beast.\"